Smart meters - what is the catch?

System

sacsquacco wrote: »

r and the electric is both wider and prob 3 times the height of a digital Ampy or double the height of an analogue meter.

My EMLITE smart meter (EV usage monitoring) is the same width as my old analogue meter but 21mm longer (0.8 of an inch). It's most certainly 'talking' to someone as monitoring is a key requirement of the EV charger grant.

superbigal36

Who supplies the sims or roaming sims for smart meter ?
An M2M company ?
Clearly the sim provider wants a decent income but the utility company wont want to be continually paying for data transfer.
I believe the meters are read a "few times" per day or at least "can" be read a few times a day. Albeit it appears permission is required.
How much data is transferred.

[Deleted User]

superbigal36 wrote: »

Who supplies the sims or roaming sims for smart meter ?
An M2M company ?
Clearly the sim provider wants a decent income but the utility company wont want to be continually paying for data transfer.
I believe the meters are read a "few times" per day or at least "can" be read a few times a day. Albeit it appears permission is required.
How much data is transferred.

latest smarts are hub, no sims.. When smart meters were first installed for the first year or so there was no element of approval needed from the occupiers.Quite rightly they were just fitted whether the occupier liked it or not as their meter had reached an age for replacement.Then the MPs stuck their noses in and the Lib Dems etc started waving their arms and weeping about human rights etc leading to people like LeeUK comparing us to North Korea because he does nt want one. Personally I care more about reducing energy theft and stopping people getting prepay meters because they can t be bothered to read their own meters and end up with large debts.

Sterlingtimes

The world demand for electricity is doubling every ten years. The world demand for energy is doubling every 20 years. There is a need to reduce demand, to increase supply and to manage/control the energy we have better.

However, there are members of the public who resist supply and demand management through smart metering, just as others campaign against wind farms, solar farms, nuclear, fracking etc.

I think that the answer is that those who wholly resist smart metering ultimately go onto a legacy meter tariff which charges back to them the cost of visits to read the meter but more particularly a premium to cover the price of supply at the highest rates.

[Deleted User]

Sterlingtimes wrote: »

The world demand for electricity is doubling every ten years. The world demand for energy is doubling every 20 years. There is a need to reduce demand, to increase supply and to manage/control the energy we have better.

However, there are members of the public who resist supply and demand management through smart metering, just as others campaign against wind farms, solar farms, nuclear, fracking etc.

I think that the answer is that those who wholly resist smart metering ultimately go onto a legacy meter tariff which charges back to them the cost of visits to read the meter but more particularly a premium to cover the price of supply at the highest rates.

Thats the long term plan,to charge approx £60 per year or £1 .10 p a week to cover the metering costs. They are forcing the suppliers to have people like me driving around all day pumping out CO2 out uselessly knocking on doors all day..Its last centurys technology.Maybe when LeeUK is hit with the extra costs he ll change his mind and demand a smart meter as its his" right " to have one.

[Deleted User]

sacsquacco wrote: »

Thats the long term plan,to charge approx £60 per year or £1 .10 p a week to cover the metering costs. They are forcing the suppliers to have people like me driving around all day pumping out CO2 out uselessly knocking on doors all day..Its last centurys technology.Maybe when LeeUK is hit with the extra costs he ll change his mind and demand a smart meter as its his" right " to have one.

I don't need a smart meter to tell me how to save electricity. I've been saving electricity long before it was fashionable. All my lights are energy savers, I only boil enough water, I turn stuff off when not in use, I don't leave stuff on standby. I have been doing all they long before the energy companies started giving out helpful tips on saving electricity. I am capable of submitting meter reads online also.

My 'dumb' meter was only just swapped for a new 'dumb' meter a few years ago so I know it won't need upgrading due to age for a long time yet.

dericS

Hengus wrote: »

'what emergency' do you have in mind, and why would you want the meter location changed.?

Again, not entirely sure I am correct on this, but wouldn't the [gas] meters need to be accessible in case of a serious gas leak? ATM my meters have been situated in a ridiculous position in my enclosed garden (long before I bought the property!), hence why it would be good to have the opportunity to move them to a more accessible location (and not just for space reasons). That said, you are right, as it stands, the cost of moving meters falls on the individual which is a little unfair given it was the gas company which placed the meters in their current location in the first place.

System

dericS wrote: »

Again, not entirely sure I am correct on this, but wouldn't the [gas] meters need to be accessible in case of a serious gas leak? ATM my meters have been situated in a ridiculous position in my enclosed garden (long before I bought the property!), hence why it would be good to have the opportunity to move them to a more accessible location (and not just for space reasons). That said, you are right, as it stands, the cost of moving meters falls on the individual which is a little unfair given it was the gas company which placed the meters in their current location in the first place.

It could be argued that the further away the gas isolation point is from your property, the safer it would be in the event of a gas leak. That said, we are talking about two different things here: meters and isolation points. If it is the latter which concerns you then as far as I know there is nothing to stop a gas safe engineer from putting in a second isolation point upstream of the meter which is closer to your property.

C_Mababejive

Whether we like it or not, the smart meter agenda is all about

a)more closely matching production and supply with demand
b)having the possibility of charging different rates for different time periods
c)remote cutoff
d)remote reading
e)better anti fraud measures


Unfortunately there has been a lack of a co-ordinated joined up approach from the myriad of suppliers out there and so what started off as a seemingly good idea is turning into a mish mash.

Hedgehog99

Sterlingtimes wrote: »

The Smart City idea is that is that Electricity Distributor has a good fix on demand and can manage supply accordingly. Once a month would be insufficient to be useful. As electricity demand increases it will be necessary to manage better manage the infrastructure.

"Manage" rings alarm bells for me. "Manage" implies not being able to give all households the power they want/need at a particular time. Power companies already know domestic demand is higher in the evenings and workplace demand in the daytime. They know people stick the kettle on in the Corrie ad break. Monthly readings are fine. More frequent is none of the suppliers' business.

There are now "smart" white goods which also communicate with s/ms, so, not only do they know your total consumption, they'll gradually know what.

If it comes to imposed power cuts, I'd be fed up if I was in the middle of a washing machine cycle & I got cut off because of the demand from the six TVs, laptops, games consoles and kettles in the (hypothetical) HMO next door.

Of course, they already can, and do, turn the power off, so it doesn't need a s/m for them to be able to do that.